The Very Best of the Edinburgh Festivals 2024
Review: Assembly Hall
Review: Orchestra of Sound
Review: After the Silence
Published 12 Aug 2010
39658 original
Ivo Graham’s jokes about his gawky younger self saw him prevail in last year’s So You Think You’re Funny contest, and he’s sticking to his theme for his first full Fringe show. It’s a rich comedic seam to mine—who didn’t have an awkward adolescence that's fun to laugh about, now it’s over?—and Graham is mining for all he’s worth. At 19, he won’t be able to do so for all that much longer, but he’s good enough that changing his tune won’t present a problem. He races breathlessly through material about Facebook, boarding school, and geeky childhood pastimes. A welcome sense of risk comes courtesy of occasionally edgy ad-libs and a well dealt-with heckler, whose pint Graham confiscates with cheerful insouciance.
While Graham can draw on a stock of practised material, Alfie Brown, the second of tonight’s double-header, tries to relieve the pressure by getting his balls out for a spell. It might be churlish to focus on a brief if memorable incident in a set that, on only its second night, was far from polished – but really, there’s material that’s a bit rough around the edges, and then there’s someone’s junk in your face.
Enough gold shines through the nerves to suggest that Brown has talent as well as mere anatomy – like when he wins the audience over with a genuinely charismatic soliloquy from Hamlet, only to dispel the gravitas with an expertly-timed burst of swearing. But for now these moments are interspersed with pauses, and outnumbered by routines which are wilfully shocking but not all that funny.
Enough gold shines through the nerves to suggest that Brown has talent as well as mere anatomy – like when he wins the audience over with a genuinely charismatic soliloquy from Hamlet, only to dispel the gravitas with an expertly-timed burst of swearing. But for now these moments are interspersed with pauses, and outnumbered by routines which are wilfully shocking but not all that funny.